Jo Seub

Sort of in the same vein as cultural greats like Cindy Sherman, Korean artist Jo Seub explores self portraiture. But he often gives the effect that Ren & Stimpy had on me as a child who had yet to find humor in the grotesqueness of human (animated mangy animals) condition. An article by art critic Moon Young-Min on the artist’s website explains the “reason for his aesthetics of the frivolous, for his use of comedy as an art form; today’s younger generation understands comedy. Jo demonstrates clearly that one can communicate seriously while at the same time being funny…Jo Seub is not only skeptical about the ideology and religion that he is satirizing but he is also rebelling against the excessive weight and seriousness of the doctrinarian teaching and its rigid methodology. In fact, anti-Communism under the military dictatorship in South Korea, which took place in the context of South-North confrontation, is not much different from the anti-imperialism inculcated in North Korea.”